Cameras with conventional flashlights have the disadvantage that the flashlights have a defined emission characteristic. It can thus happen that, in the case of an image recorded by the camera, a motif situated in the foreground is overexposed, while the background illumination may be insufficient. One possibility for solving this problem would be to record an image sequence of images exposed to different extents and to superimpose them computationally. This makes high requirements of the storage capacity and computing power of the camera and causes a high current consumption, which is disadvantageous particularly in the case of battery-operated devices such as cameras.
JP 2008-084600 A discloses a flashlight for a camera of a mobile telephone in which the position of an LED in a reflector can be changed by a servomotor. In this way, the region illuminated overall by the flashlight can be better matched to the image excerpt. The fundamental problem of possible overexposure of a motif in the foreground remains unresolved, however, in the case of this flashlight. Moreover, a flashlight of this type is technically complicated and, for example, on account of the moving parts, susceptible to faults. It is expensive and has a high current consumption.
Therefore, it could be helpful to provide an illumination device with which a predefined solid angle range, in particular a solid range to be imaged by a camera, can be variably illuminated in a simple manner.